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Creativity and its Relationship to Age, Vocabulary and Personality of Schizophrenics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Ihsan Al-Issa
Ihsan Al-Issa*
Affiliation:
Netherne Hospital, Coulsdon, Surrey
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Abstract

Summary

As chronic schizophrenia is characterized by a complex and differentiated impairment of intellect, it is of interest to study the various creative-thinking abilities (Guilford, 1959) in chronic schizophrenics. In the present experiment, creativity was defined as the patients' scores on a battery of tests for flexibility, originality and ideational fluency. The patients were also given the Wechsler Bellevue Vocabulary Scale and the Eysenck Personality Inventory. It was found that while vocabulary and neuroticism are positively correlated with creativity, age and extraversion show the opposite trend. Furthermore, vocabulary is negatively correlated with extraversion and positively correlated with neuroticism. Thus it was clearly demonstrated that the creativity of chronic schizophrenics is not independent of age, verbal ability and the personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism. It is suggested that the results were probably affected by institutionalization, duration of illness and the patient's level of drive. Creativity was subsumed under the general problem of evaluating the behaviour and symptoms of psychiatric patients.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 110 , Issue 464 , January 1964 , pp. 74 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1964 

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